Role of lipids in the extrusion cooking processes

Extrusion is a versatile and very efficient technology that is widely used in food and feed processing. The cooking extruders have found many applications, which include: breakfast cereals, snack foods, other cereal based products, pet food and aquatic foods, texturized vegetable proteins, confectionery products, chemical and biochemical reactions, and oil extraction. Lipids are components that play an important role in most of the extrusion cooking processes. They can act as plastificizers or emulsifiers, and affect more significantly texture and stickiness of the extrudate. This paper reviews effect of oils and other lipids reactions during extrusion cooking as well as the effects of amylase-lipid complexation on extrudate quality.